He nodded. ‘Sure.’
Mei Yuan quickly took over. ‘Now we’re all here tonight, because Li Yan and Margaret have announced their intention to get married,’ she said. ‘And in China that means a joining together not only of two people, but of two families.’ And she turned to the presents which she had set out on the lacquer table for the second night running, and asked Mrs. Campbell and Li’s father to take seats at opposite ends of the table while she presented them.
Ninety-nine dollars from Mrs. Campbell.
Dragon and phoenix cake from Mr. Li.
Sweetmeats from the Campbells.
Tobacco from the Lis.
‘A pity none of us smokes,’ Margaret said.
Mei Yuan pressed quickly on, and they exchanged bottles of wine, packs of sugar, a set of brightly painted china hens.
When, finally, a tin of green tea was presented to Mrs. Campbell she said, ‘Ah, yes, to encourage as many little Lis and Campbells as possible.’ She looked pointedly at Margaret’s bump. ‘It’s just a pity they didn’t wait until they were married.’ She paused a moment before she smiled, and then everyone else burst out laughing, a release of tension.
Margaret’s smile was fixed and false. She said, ‘I see Mr. Li is having no trouble with his English tonight.’
The smile faded on the old man’s face, and he glanced at Li who could only shrug, bewildered and angered by Margaret’s behaviour.
But the moment was broken by the arrival of the manageress, who announced that food would now be served, and would they please take their places at the table.
As everyone rose to cross the room, Mrs. Campbell grabbed her daughter’s arm and hissed, ‘What on earth’s got into you, Margaret?’
‘Nothing,’ Margaret said. She pulled free of her mother’s grasp and took her seat, flicking her napkin on to her lap and sitting, then, in sullen silence. She knew she was behaving badly, but could not help herself. She should never have come, she knew that now. It was all a charade. A farce.
Tonight’s fare included fewer ‘delicacies’, following Mei Yuan’s quiet word with the manageress about the sensitivities of the western palate. And so dish after dish of more conventional cuisine was brought to the table and placed on the Lazy Susan. A silence fell over the gathering as the guests picked and ate, and Mrs. Campbell struggled to make her chopsticks convey the food from the plate to her mouth. Beer was poured for everyone, and tiny golden goblets filled with wine for toasting.
Mei Yuan made the first toast, to the health and prosperity of the bride and groom to be. Mrs. Campbell raised her goblet to toast the generosity of her Chinese hosts, and when they had all sipped their wine, cleared her throat and said, ‘And who is it, exactly, who is going to pay for the wedding?’
Li glanced at Margaret, but her eyes were fixed on her lap. He cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘Well, Margaret and I have discussed that,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to be a big wedding. I mean, more or less just those of us who are here tonight, and one or two invited guests. We are going to keep it very simple. A tea ceremony at my apartment, a declaration at the twin altars, and then the banquet. The legal stuff is just a formality. So we thought…well, we thought we’d just pay for it ourselves.’
‘Nonsense!’ Mrs. Campbell said loudly, startling them. ‘It may be a Chinese wedding, but my daughter is an American. And in America it is the tradition that the bride’s family pays for the wedding. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.’
‘I don’t think I could allow you to do that, Mrs. Campbell,’ Li’s father said suddenly, to everyone’s surprise.
But Margaret’s mother put her hand over his. ‘Mr. Li,’ she said, ‘you might speak very good English, but you don’t know much about Americans. Because if you did, you would know that you do not argue with an American lady on her high horse.’
Mr. Li said, ‘Mrs. Campbell, you are right. I do not know much about Americans. But I know plenty about women. And I know just how dangerous it can be to argue with one, regardless of her nationality.’ Which produced a laugh around the table.
‘Good,’ Mrs. Campbell said. ‘Then we understand one another perfectly.’ She turned back to her plate, and fumbled again with her chopsticks. She would have preferred a fork, but would never admit it.
‘No,’ Mr. Li said, and he leaned over to take her chopsticks from her. ‘Like this.’ And he showed her how to anchor the lower of the sticks and keep the top one mobile. ‘You see,’ he said. ‘It’s easy.’
Mrs. Campbell tried out her new grip, flexing the upper chopstick several times before attempting to lift a piece of meat from her plate. To her amazement she picked it up easily. ‘Well, I never,’ she said. ‘I always thought chopsticks were a pretty damned stupid way of eating food.’ She picked up another piece of meat. ‘But I guess a billion Chinese can’t be wrong.’ She turned to smile at Mr. Li and found him looking at her appraisingly.
‘What age are you, Mrs. Campbell?’ he asked.
She was shocked. Margaret had told her that the Chinese were unabashed about asking personal questions. But clearly she had not anticipated anything quite so direct. ‘I’m not sure that is any of your business, Mr. Li. What age are you?’
‘Sixty-seven.’
‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘You have a year or two on me.’
‘Maybe you remember when your president came to visit China?’
‘Our President? You mean George W. Bush?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I can’t stand the little man!’
‘No. Not Bush. President Nixon.’
‘Oh.’ She was faintly embarrassed. Nixon had become something of a presidential pariah in the aftermath of Watergate. ‘Actually, I do.’
‘Nineteen seventy-two,’ the old man said. ‘They had just let me out of prison.’
‘Prison?’ Mrs. Campbell uttered the word as if it made a nasty taste in her mouth.
‘It was during the Cultural Revolution, you understand,’ he said. ‘I was a “dangerous intellectual”. I was going to crush all their heavy weapons with my vocabulary.’ He grinned. ‘So they tried to knock the words out of my head, along with most of my teeth.’ He shrugged. ‘They succeeded a little bit. But when they let me out, it was nineteen seventy-two, and I heard that the President of the United States was going to come to China.’ He paused and sighed, recalling some deeply painful memory. ‘You cannot know, Mrs. Campbell, what that meant then to someone like me, to millions of Chinese who had been starved of any contact with the outside world.’
Li listened, amazed, as his father talked. He had never heard him speak like this. He had never discussed his experiences during the Cultural Revolution with his family, let alone a stranger.
The old man went on, ‘It was to be on television. But hardly anyone had a television then, and even if I knew someone who did, I would not have been allowed to watch it. But I wanted to see the President of America coming to China, so I searched around all the old shops and market stalls where we lived in Sichuan. And over several weeks, I was able to gather together all the bits and pieces to build my own television set. All except for the cathode ray tube. I could not find one anywhere. At least, not one which worked. But I started to build my television anyway, and just three days before your president was due to arrive, I found a working tube in an old set in a junk shop in town. When Nixon took his first steps on Chinese soil, when he shook hands with Mao, I saw it as it happened.’ He shrugged, and smiled at the memory. ‘The picture was green and a little fuzzy. Well, actually, a lot fuzzy. But I saw it anyway. And…’ He seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘…I wept.’
Margaret saw that her mother’s eyes were moist, and felt an anger growing inside her.